How do social sciences explain the emergence of mental disorders in societies and in individuals?

For instance, can we understand why and how someone becomes ‘schizophrenic’, ‘hyperactive’ or ‘borderline’? Can we explain the mechanisms through which ‘anorexia’, ‘autism’ and ‘anxiety’ emerge as major mental health issues? Are we able to grasp the causes of what is now called, in many countries, the ‘mental health crisis’?

This book aims to map out how sociologists, but also anthropologists and historians, have developed answers to these questions.

Identifying the theoretical and methodological reasonings that underlie social explanations for the emergence of ‘mental illness/ disorder’ since the seminal works of Durkheim (1952 [1897]), Faris and Dunham (1939) and others, we provide a critical overview of these approaches with a view to moving this field forward, and reorganizing it, in particular, to help scholars aligned with the sociology of mental health and illness to better realize the promise of this arena of research.

Turning points

There are several reasons why we decided to write this book. Each of us had worked for some time as sociologists researching issues often categorized as relating to ‘mental illness’. We both started with studies of self-injury (Chandler, 2016; Brossard, 2018), before moving into broader areas including suicide, dementia and addictions, as well as teaching courses addressing mental health from sociological perspectives. Through these different engagements we became aware of significant challenges in these fields, and of some stagnation. We saw untapped opportunities for sociology and cognate disciplines to contribute more extensively to understandings of and – crucially – explanations for ‘mental illness’.

Why ‘explaining’? This word, in some sociological circles, has a Durkheimian connotation; in others it is associated with the notion of identifying particular ‘factors’ that can explain mental illness. In our case, we employ it in the broad sense of describing and analysing the processes through which mental disorders come into existence.

This choice reflects a certain intellectual context. Indeed, we stand at the middle of important social, political and epistemological shifts that question what it means to study mental health from a social perspective. These shifts challenge the role that social scientists can uphold in studying mental health.